Cracks
by Maristela Freesia
Summary: Penelope Clearwater's fractured mind never completely healed. Post-DH. One-sided Penny/Percy.


**cracks**

Penelope Clearwater's fractured mind never completely healed.

But what did she expect? Even the short amount of time she spent in Azkaban was _much_ too long for her to stay completely sane. It was agony, it was torture, and she could _not_ imagine that anybody stayed completely whole after that.

Every now and then in her cell she'd start daydreaming, when there was no Dementor right in front of her cell. She thought about Percy, who she never stopped loving even when he broke it off with her. He was a pure-blood, wasn't he? That meant that he was probably safe. But what if they decided that he was too close to the old ways to live? Oh, God, what if they killed him?

It was strange, because these very thoughts filled her daydreams time and time again.

And when they _finally_ let her out, she finds the list of the dead. When she sees the name Weasley, her heart stops. When she sees the name Fred, she aches for Percy, because he's surely not going to ache for his brother himself. She may love him with more heart than she loves herself, but she does understand that he probably is too devoted to work to even notice he died until he gets called for the funeral.

So maybe she wasn't _completely_ whole, but she was mostly whole until she went antique shopping.

Penelope loved antiques. They were proof that old could be beautiful, and that was something she _really_ needed to hang onto in the days to come, because she suspected that she would grow old alone. She'd been worried about it ever since she got out of Azkaban eight years ago. But better alone, old, and beautiful than just alone and old, right?

Antiques practically filled every corner of her apartment, and the day Penelope went antique shopping one more time before she gave up was the last day of searching for a mirror. Try and hide it though she may, Penelope was a very, very vain woman, and vain women needed mirrors. And as such, she went shopping.

The mirrors at antique stores were beautiful, but maybe a little odd, particularly because she only got wizard antiques. One mirror kept telling her what was wrong with her appearance ("So you can fix it, dear," the saleswoman had said right after the mirror informed her that her hair looked like a fluffed-up cat) and another sang nonstop songs. It wasn't until she got to the back mirror that she found something she would really love to buy.

It was tall and grand, ornate and beautiful, just the kind of thing she'd love to see in someone's room as they walked in, or probably as someone walked into her apartment. The mirror had some strange inscription on it: _Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi._ There was a day when Penelope would've stared at that until she figured it out, but those days were gone with a good chunk of her sanity, so she just looked in the mirror.

Her heart stopped cold.

Oh, she was there, with her long, tangled chocolate brown hair. The horrendously dirty emerald green robes she was wearing were even identical down to the last fold in the fabric. But in the mirror, she was smiling, which she was fairly sure she wasn't doing. And in the mirror, there were arms wrapped around her. And those arms were in a pair of black robes, covering the body of someone with bright, flaming scarlet hair and a smile-

Penelope half-expected that when she whirled around, Percy would really be behind her, and she wasn't going crazy. Of course, the logical part of her explained that she'd finally lost it and was seeing what she wanted in a mirror. But when she turned back, Percy looked so _real_ that she couldn't help but think that maybe she wouldn't mind it if she was mad. Slowly, the woman turned back to the mirror. Yes, it was Percy, standing with his arms folded around her, smiling lovingly at her, and her at him. She stared at her reflection and its partner, wondering if it showed the future.

_But it's impossible,_ a nasty little voice whispered in the back of her mind. _He got married, remember? He even invited you to the wedding, the idiot. Who invites their ex-girlfriend who they haven't seen in years to their wedding? You're better than that, you shouldn't even be wanting him, and this isn't real._

Somehow, Penelope really didn't want the voice to be right. Surely this was what would happen. Percy would realize that this Audrey whoever that he married wasn't who he really wanted, and then they'd divorce and he'd find her. Surely this would be real.

Penelope turned to the saleswoman. "How much for the mirror?"

As she finally got the mirror back into her small apartment, she set it up against the wall and sat there, staring at her future self. _This is the day,_ she thought often. _This is the day it comes true._

Penelope Clearwater died at age thirty, about a month after she purchased the mirror. The examinations proved that she'd died from malnutrition. All the long hours in front of the mirror ended up being worth nothing, because she died before the nonexistent future had a chance of happening. Her funeral was small, mostly close school friends and her family.

Percy Weasley was invited. He did not attend.

Although Penelope had the chance to be truly great, it was stolen from her, along with her sanity, when she was forced into Azkaban. Her mind cracked, and when she found the mirror, her sanity slid through the cracks in her mind until there was nothing left but a shell. She never even got the chance to try and heal her mind. And ultimately, that was her downfall.

**Ha. I love this idea, although I can't figure out how the Mirror of Erised ended up in an antique store. This is for RoseWeasley123's "I show not your face..." challenge on the HPFC forum. I asked for a Ravenclaw and got... PADMA PATIL! Just kidding. Review, please! Thanks for reading!**


End file.
